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Matthew Yang King
| birth_place = New York, New York, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | other_names = Matt Yang King, Matt King, Matthew King | alma_mater = New York University, Hall High School (Connecticut) | occupation = Actor, voice actor, producer, director, writer | years_active = 1998–present | spouse = | children = | website = }} Matthew Yang King (born May 6, 1974) is an American actor, voice actor, director, producer, and writer. He is most known for recurring roles on ''Riverdale'', Powers, 24, ''Strong Medicine'', and ''Numb3rs''. He created the webseries World of Steam and has provided voiceover work for numerous television shows, video games, and commercials including Netflix's new Love, Death, and Robots, Studio Ghibli's 25th Anniversary English edition of ''Only Yesterday'' with Daisy Ridley, the ''World of Warcraft'' franchise, G.I. Joe: Renegades, Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Fortnite, Supah Ninjas, and ''Marvel Heroes''. Early and personal life King was born in New York, New York. At age five he began to play the violin, a skill that would lead to later roles on both stage and screen. At the age of eight, he began studying Aikido, which fostered a lifelong love of martial arts. He moved to Stamford, Connecticut at age one and later moved to Hartford where he attended Hall High School, but returned to his home town of New York after graduating high school. King studied Acting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and lived in New York until 1998, when he left to tour the United States with the musical Titanic, playing Quartermaster Robert Hichens and Bandsman Bricoux. IBDB|website=www.ibdb.com|access-date=2019-02-19}} The tour began in Los Angeles, where King moved after leaving the tour in 2000. He continues to live there with his wife and three children. Career Voice acting King has provided numerous iconic voices for both television and film animation and video games, from the voice of the Father and Kozou in Studio Ghibli's Only Yesterday to Illidan Stormrage in the World of Warcraft francise, from The Persuader in Bruce Timm's Justice League vs The Fatal Five to The Atom in Injustice 2, and from the voice of Eian in Batman Ninja to the voices of Splinter and Shredder in [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT)]]. You may also hear him as the voice of Apple in numerous television ads. King also voiced Liu Kang in ''Mortal Kombat 11 Additionally, King was one of the creators and hosts of the long-running podcast, GeeksOn , with Aaron Hendricks, Donald Marshall, and Peter Gamble Robinson. Film and television King is most well known for his recurring roles on Riverdale, ''Numb3rs'', 24, and ''Strong Medicine''. His best-known film role is starring opposite Danny Huston in the Bernard Rose film, ''The Kreutzer Sonata'', which also features King playing the violin. Stage King's stage credits include the first Broadway touring production of Titanic: The Musical, East West Players' Yankee Dawg You Die as Bradley with Sab Shimono and The Tempest as Caliban with fellow NYU Tisch alumnus Daniel Dae Kim, and an NAACP award-winning hip-hop version of The Two Gentlemen of Verona called 2G's at Los Angeles' Sacred Fools Theater MAINSTAGE 2000 - 2G's (Two Gentlemen of Verona)|website=www.sacredfools.org|access-date=2019-03-08}} Writing Frustrated with playing sterotypically Asian roles in the early-mid 2000s, King began writing to create roles for minority actors "that people felt they could wrap their brains around that were about being ethnic...and racism." The Harrowing, his script with Peter Gamble featuring an African-American man as the lead in a horror film, won numerous awards (see below) and is still in development. Crowdfunding projects In 2017, King collaborated with cartoonist Tarol Hunt and fellow producers Phil LaMarr and Danielle Stephens to bring Hunt's webcomic, Goblins, to life as an animated series. The Goblins Animated campaign on Indiegogo was to produce a five-minute long mega-trailer/pilot that could be used to garner more interest in the project. King himself voices one of the characters, Fumbles. Notable voice actors make up the rest of the cast, including Phil LaMarr as Complains of Names, Billy West as Minmax, Maurice LaMarche as Forgath, Jim Cummings as Thaco, Tara Strong as Saves a Fox, Matthew Mercer as Big Ears, Jennifer Hale as Kin, and Steve Blum as Kore. The mega-trailer is currently under production. In 2012, King created a Kickstarter project for his steampunk webseries called The World of Steam. Written, directed, and produced by King, the show is set in a Twilight Zone-type Steampunk universe and featured Scott Folsom, Gail Folsom, Gina Torres, Mido Hamada, Karl E. Landler, Julian Curtis, Robin Atkin Downes and King himself as the host, Mr. Liang. At the time, the series was the highest-grossing webseries ever on Kickstarter. The first episode, The Clockwork Heart, was released as a webisode in 2013 contains music by composer Bear McCreary. The remainder of the series is still in the works and is being developed for television. Steampunk work After the creation of the World of Steam webseries in 2012 (see above), King was seen as a leader in the Steampunk creative community. As a result, he was invited to serve as one of the three judges on the first-ever network Steampunk-themed reality show, Game Show Network's Steampunk'd in 2015. Shows Steampunk’d|date=2015-10-31|website=web.archive.org|access-date=2019-03-11}} King cites his Steampunk influces as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, K.W. Jeter, Robert Howard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and China Mieville, among others. He collaborated with Scott and Gail Folsom from the League of STEAM on the pilot episode for the World of Steam, "The Clockwork Heart," and was cited in the 2016 book, Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures, edited by Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall. His Love, Death and Robots episode, "Good Hunting," is Asian-inspired Steampunk. King has appeared at various Steampunk conventions as a presenter and judge (see below), and is currently collaborating with Cheyenne Wright of ''Girl Genius'' on a new Steampunk project called The Cabinet of Curiosities. Convention Appearances Filmography Live action Television Film Voice acting Film Television Video games Stage Awards and nominations References External links * * * Category:American male television actors Category:American male film actors Category:American male video game actors Category:20th-century American male actors Category:21st-century American male actors Category:Living people Category:1974 births Category:American male actors of Chinese descent Category:American male voice actors Category:American male musical theatre actors Category:New York University alumni Category:Tisch School of the Arts alumni